A Little Office Update & DIY Cork Board Tutorial

You may or may not remember that we re-vamped our home office a little while ago, and you can find the original post here. However, a few weeks after this we had a bit of a home disaster. We were about to go out for the afternoon, and I popped into the office to grab something when I noticed the corner of the ceiling was starting to dip. I gave it a poke, and my finger pretty much went straight through the wet plasterboard! Mr T crawled up in the loft and found a massive wet patch where the recent heavy rain had been coming through a cracked roof tile, until it finally seeped right through the ceiling. Not good.

The ceiling was one of those 70’s textured Artex numbers, and once dry the whole lot needed skimming over to ensure an even finish. We didn’t see the point in doing half a job. The walls still needed the God-awful wallpaper ripping off, and the woodwork needed sanding and painting. So we decided we might as well start again, and do things properly this time. We still have a couple of little jobs to finish in this space, but we’ve cracked on with it all and it already looks so much better. Once we have totally finished, I will pop up a full room tour.

For now I thought I’d show you a little snippet with a tutorial for creating your own cheap-as-chips cork wall. It’s a great way of keeping together all those ideas on scraps of paper, as well as hiding a less than perfect wall surface!

This DIY is super simple, and all you will need is:

A pack or two of cork floor tiles. I used a total of 6 in this project, but you can obviously use more if you’d like to cover a larger area. Mine were a thickness of 3mm, and cost just over £3 in total.

1-2 rolls of mounting tape. This should be readily available from your nearest DIY or stationery shop, and costs no more than £1-£2.

Sugar soap & a sponge.

The first thing you’ll need to do is give the wall a good scrub with sugar soap, just to make sure there’s no grime or residue that will stop the mounting tape sticking to the wall. Once you’ve done this, leave the area to dry for a few hours.

Next, plan out how many tiles you will need to cover the area where your cork board is going. Apply several strips of mounting tape to the rough side of each tile you need, and press down firmly. Once you’ve done this, remove the backing from the mounting tape, and position the tiles on the wall in whatever pattern you fancy! Again, press down hard to make sure the tape bonds to the wall, and the whole lot doesn’t come crashing down.

Before you add any items to your cork wall, leave the tiles to fully bond to the wall for a few hours. Then you can pin away to your heart’s content!

I’m loving our cork wall so far. It’s such an inexpensive way of making a feature out of a blank wall, and you can change it up whenever you fancy. Why not give it a try yourself?